STEVE BIKO
AND THE ENVISIONED SELF
Recently, on a
visit to South Africa, I met a priest who was deeply concerned about where the
country was going. Elections are due this month and he felt there was
widespread anxiety about the ability of whoever wins to deliver what is needed.
Unusually, he was critical of Mandela. While he recognised the sacrifice he
made and the achievement of freedom he facilitated, he felt Mandiba did not
follow through after 1994 in inspiring people to have confidence in themselves
and hold their new rulers accountable. He looked back to Steve Biko, killed by
the regime in 1977, as one who had devoted all his powers to developing a sense
of who they are in black people.
Passing through
Durban’s King Shaka airport, BIKO’s name stared at me from a book stand and I
purchased a 40th anniversary edition of his I Write What I Want. I
remember the excitement at the time when Biko’s affirmation of ‘black
consciousness’ first came to our attention. It took time to understand what he
was saying and even today, 47 years later, we still don’t tease out the hidden
strength contained in his teaching.
Basically, Biko
held that far worse than the physical restraints and humiliations of apartheid
was the psychological imprisonment of which blacks were often unaware. He
analysed the ways in which blacks unconsciously measured themselves against
white standards and acted as though white was right. He applied his lens to
society, culture and religion and found each of them encroaching on black
self-understanding and warping it. South African society is still divided today
though differently than fifty years ago. Here are his words:
Once the various groups within a given community have
asserted themselves to the point that mutual respect has to be shown then you
have the ingredients of a true and meaningful integration. At the heart of true
integration is the provision for each man, each group to rise and attain the
envisioned self. Each group must be able to attain its style of existence
without encroaching on or being thwarted by another. Out of the mutual respect
for each other and complete freedom of self-determination there will obviously
arise a genuine fusion of life-style of the various groups. This is true
integration. (p. 22)
Biko was deeply
affected by the society he found himself in at university and, in effect,
abandoned his medical studies to devote his energy to working out what it was
that caused his unease. He had the courage to follow through on his
reflections, share them with others and refine them – and eventually die for
them. At first the regime thought he was on its side by his emphasis affirming
blacks and so seemingly separating black and white, but they soon came to
realise he was doing this to strengthen blacks so that they could, in time,
confront the white takeover of their country.
He wrote,
In all we do we always place Man first and hence all
our action is usually joint community oriented action rather than the
individualism that is the hallmark of the capitalist approach. We always refrain
from using people as stepping stones. Instead we are prepared to have a much
slower progress in an effort to make sure that all of us are marching to the
same tune. (p. 46)
Do politicians, in
their quest for power, respond to the hidden, hardly conscious, desire of
people to ‘attain to their envisioned self’?
5 May 2024 Easter
Sunday 6B Acts 10:25…48 1
Jn 4:7-10 Jn 15:9-17
